Exit Through The Car Park

As I got off the train at Central Station today I wasn't looking for a way to avoid the ticket guys waiting at the barriers. I actually had the correct fare in my pocket ready. It was just that as the train pulled in to platform 15 (the furthest west) it also pulled up alongside the rather narrow slipway into the NCP car park. Naturally, I was curious, so I pushed the bike up the ramp, in through the doorless doorway and voila! I slid quietly down and out (imagine the circular slides you sometimes see in the park) into the brightly lit and empty Oswald street. It was only upon getting home that I realised that that was the first time ever I had cycled through a car-park (of course it was!). And that there was nothing quite like it. I felt like a child again, avoiding authority and finding a hole in the fence that led through to a paradise. It wasn't just the fact that I had made off without paying my train fare (I'll pay them next time) but that I had instantly taken the hole in the fence as soon as I saw it. No hesitation, just pure spirit. And it was good. So good that I simply had to write this to tell everyone else how good it was. Try it, next time you pull into platform 15 (I was coming back from Lochwinnoch), and your door lines up with the car park, and you'll see what I mean.

I did it the next day too! (Yep, it was that good). My train door this time didn't quiten align itself with car park exit but who cares... [Ramp straight ahead in picture]

There's something about the polished finish of car park floors that reminds me of holy shrines. They have been smoothed so much by slowly passing cars that they have gathered an aspect to them that loves the bicycle wheel. Just don't go too fast.

No sooner am I ejected out into the empty Oswald Street than I am on the cycle path alongside the river. Another ten minutes and I am at Bell's Bridge, and five minutes after that I am home in my flat in Cessnock. It's hard to believe that half an hour prior to arriving home I was in Lochwinnoch. Never buy a car.... Bike + Train = Brain....!